Monday, 2 June 2008

Police: "you can't preach here, this is a Muslim area"

Here's an example of the kind of chilling effect on liberty and free speech that "hate speech" laws have even when they have explicit clauses in them protecting propagation of religions. Even with those clauses (which many argued were unnecessary, as nobody would be so foolish as to make a mistake in such an area, blah blah blah), activists in the guise of policemen seek to propagate their own ends like so:

The incident happened to Mr Arthur Cunningham and Mr Joseph Abraham as they were handing out Christian tracts on the corner of Ellesmere and Alum Rock Road in the city on 19 February this year.

PCSO Naguthney (30825) told the Christians they were committing a hate crime by attempting to convert Muslims to Christianity and that he was going to take them to the police station.